The reported sale price of $2.8 million is a far cry from the wildly optimistic $7,000,000 price tag the seller—an Austrian-born mover and shaker in the beauty and fashion industry—first put on the idiosyncratic apartment way way way back in March 2008.
The sky-lit kitchen has stainless steel counter tops and cabinets as well as a full suite of top-grade Euro-style stainless steel appliances. Shoji-style sliding panel separate the bedroom from the kitchen area and the adjacent bathroom is a blush-tone extravaganza of limestone—or some other fancy-pants stone—and a cacophony of sinuous circular shapes that mimic the circular shape of the massive main living/dining room.
Since it's conversion to a conversion to a full-service co-operative apartment house in 1988 the heavily ornamented building, a magnificent mish-mash of Beaux Arts, Edwardian and Baroque Renaissance Revival styles, has attracted its fair share of high profile downtown dwellers who enjoy 24-7 doorman and concierge services and residents only access to a private garden and gym.
Previous residents with recognizable names include Toni Morrison, Calvin Klein, and Steffi Graf as well as a slew of supermodels such as Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, and Naomi Campbell. A Police Building insider snitched to Your Mama that current residents include actresses Lauren Graham and Michelle Rodriguez although they do not—least as far as Your Mama knows—live together. French fashion photographer Gilles Bensimon owns a couple of apartments in the building including a three bedroom and three bathroom duplex spread on the fourth floor that's long been occupied by his ex-wife—model and former Real Housewives of New York cast member Kelly Bensimon—and is currently available for lease at $20,000 per month.
Back on the Left Coast young Miss Ellison owns three very contemporary city view residences all in a row in the so-called Bird Streets area high above L.A.'s Sunset Strip. She paid designer Steve Hermann $12.6 million for the first of her three Bird Street spreads in February 2008. The following April she paid entertainment industry mogul Byron Allen $6.25 for the never occupied Steve Hermann-designed house next door and in early 2011 she shelled out another $13,800,000 for a third house. By Your Mama's rough and rudimentary calculations, Miss Ellison is into her Bird Street quasi-compound for a stomach twisting $32,650,000, an amount that makes her $2.8 million dollar pied a terre purchase in New York City look like pennies she found in the cushions of her sofa.
listing photos: Azulay Group
